Go-Between

by Lisa Brackmann

  Gary wanted her babysitting Caitlin for a reason. Safer America was important to him. The people on that board might give her a clue as to why.

  “You back in Houston?”

  “What do you think, Gary? Like you don’t know.”

  She heard Gary chuckle through her earbuds.

  “I guess I can’t put one over on you anymore, can I?”

  Michelle lay back on the bed in her new apartment, covered by her brand-new sheets. “You know, it’s late, and I’ve got to get to work tomorrow.”

  “You enjoying it? The work?”

  “It’s a little soon to say.”

  “Well, you’ll like why I’m calling you. That first installment we agreed on—you can pick it up tomorrow.”

  “Great,” Michelle said. She felt a little rush of enthusiasm. She needed the fucking money, after all, to pay for this place, to pay for her new sheets, to figure out what she was going to do about a car in this sprawling city.

  “You’ll get some instructions tomorrow night. You’re not going to have a big window, time-wise—you’ll have to hustle to the drop.”

  “Okay. You going to tell me what time?”

  “It’ll be after seven p.m. Just be ready.” A snicker. “Don’t let Caitlin talk you into cocktails.”

  Porter Ackermann looked at his tablet. “So, back to 391. Everybody’s had a week to think it over. Are we in agreement?”

  They sat around a walnut table in a dark-paneled meeting room with a view of the mall across the street. The meeting had started at 3:30 p.m. By now it was 4:45. It seemed to Michelle that not very much had actually happened.

  “I agree it should be a priority. But do we really want to focus that large a percentage of our resources on one campaign?”

  The speaker was a middle-aged white man—all seven of the board members save Caitlin and the Secretary of the Board were middle-aged to older white men.

  This one had a square head and gunmetal gray hair brushed back close to his scalp—the Donald Rumsfeld look. His name was Randall Gates, and he was involved with a company named Prostatis.

  “I don’t think we have a choice.” An older man—white hair, big gut, genial expression, the perfect shopping mall Santa Claus: Michael Campbell, who represented something called ALEAAG. “We do public advocacy for law enforcement issues,” he’d explained when he’d introduced himself, giving Michelle a pillowy handshake.

  They’d all introduced themselves at the beginning of the meeting, after Caitlin presented Michelle as her new “right-hand woman”—“any time you need to set something up for me, just talk to Michelle here.”

  “She’s a real go-getter,” Porter had added.

  Michelle, for her part, smiled, accepted handshakes and a few lingering looks—a couple of the men doing their “how fuckable is she?” inventories—and took notes. There was nothing strange about Caitlin’s new assistant wanting to know the names of the board members, was there?

  “As California goes,” another one of them said, a compact, balding man with crow’s feet around his eyes reminding her a little of Danny—that look a person gets who’s spent a lot of time outdoors, or staring into the sky. She thought his name was Steve. He hadn’t named the organization he represented.

  “If this proposition passes, we are looking at marijuana legalization sweeping across the country,” Steve said.

  Of course. Proposition 391: Legalize cannabis for recreational use in California. She felt an electric sensation in the palms of her hands, a little adrenaline rush.

  Danny in jail for pot. Maybe there was no meaningful connection.

  Maybe there was.

  “So what if it does?”

  It was Caitlin who spoke. The first words she’d said since her introduction of Michelle. You could feel a little wave of shock go around the room: everyone suddenly more attentive, expressions ranging from surprised to skeptical to carefully neutral.

  Caitlin waved a hand. “I don’t know, it’s getting to the point where all the fuss over pot just seems silly to me. I mean, how many people in this room have ever smoked pot?”

  Michelle wasn’t about to answer that question.

  “Well, I never have.” Debbie Landry, the secretary of the board, sat up straight. Probably in her fifties, but she looked younger—long, carefully dyed blonde hair, cheeks a little too taut, maybe some Botox on the forehead—but she was in great shape, too, her bare arms toned and cut.

  “It’s one thing for kids from stable backgrounds to engage in some youthful experimentation,” she said. “And even then you never know who might be susceptible to mental and emotional problems from taking that drug. For kids from disadvantaged backgrounds? We might as well just consign them to failure.”

  Another one of the men, Matthew Moss, nodded. Barrel-shaped, a helmet of brown hair, big head, full cheeks, like a Lego mini-figure. Moss had been the more obnoxious of the “is she fuckable?” crew (Campbell was too jovial for her to take seriously), holding her hand a little too long, doing the overt checking out of her cleavage. He’d introduced himself with the attitude that she should already know who he was and what he did. She didn’t.

  “It comes down to, what kind of America do we want?” he pronounced. “One that’s populated by a bunch of stoned slackers? It goes against our values as a country.”

  Had she seen him on TV, maybe? On one of those stupid political talk shows with shouting heads?

  “It’s not that I disagree with you,” Randall Gates said. “I’m just wondering if it makes sense to put all our eggs in one basket, resource-wise. We’ve also got 275 in California, and I don’t need to tell you what the implications of changing those sentencing guidelines are. And if we can’t hold the line in California, and I’m not convinced we can, we’d better start focusing on shoring up our defenses elsewhere. There’s a couple of Congressional races where, as you know, we definitely have dogs in those hunts.”

  Porter nodded. “That we do. I think the obvious answer here is, we’ll just have to raise more money.”

  A round of chuckles.

  “We’re on track to raise thirty-seven million this year,” Debbie said.

  Porter smiled. “I think we can do better than that.”

  “The polling on 391 shows a six percent majority in favor,” Steve said. “Those are numbers we can move. If we’re willing to devote the resources.”

  Matthew Moss nodded. “I think we have to make a stand on this.”

  “We’d better,” Steve said. “Things are going to get trickier in California if this new disclosure bill gets traction.”

  “Disclosure bill?” Moss asked.

  “We’ll have to report donors over one K to the secretary of state for any California races.”

  They didn’t have to already? Michelle thought. That didn’t seem right. Maybe she misunderstood.

  “Surely there will be work-arounds,” Porter said.

  Steve nodded. “There will be. But this is an easier campaign to run now. In the future?” He shrugged. “The momentum and optics may not be on our side.”

  “You find me a single user of meth or heroin who didn’t start with marijuana,” Campbell said, wagging a finger. “And then there’s the correlation with criminal behavior—”

  “Do we want our children exposed to the temptation of legal marijuana?” Debbie Landry asked. “Knowing they can buy it just as easily as they can buy a beer?”

  Caitlin laughed, a light, silvery chuckle. “Well, hon, I’d have liked my child to have lived long enough to’ve been tempted.”

  Silence.

  “Oh, hon, I’m so sorry,” Debbie said.

  Caitlin waved her hand again, this time with a shake of her head, her eyes closed. “No, I am. That was … I’m just a little tired today.”

  “We can finish up without you,” Porter said. “There’s not much left on today’s agenda.”

  “Why don’t you do that?” Caitlin said. She rose slowly. She looked frail.

  Miche
lle rose as well. “Wonderful meeting all of you,” she said, gathering up her iPad and notebook.

  She followed Caitlin out of the meeting room.

  Caitlin walked down the hall and through the reception area without stopping. Michelle wasn’t sure what to do. Caitlin seemed like a woman who didn’t want to be interrupted, who just wanted to get somewhere private and hole up, sink into her deep, warm well of unending grief. It could be a comfortable place, Michelle knew.

  It’s my job to look after her, she thought.

  “Caitlin?”

  Caitlin stopped. Her hand gripped the corner of a file cabinet. She turned to Michelle, her eyes a little red, her smile back in place. “Oh, I’m sorry, Michelle. Didn’t mean to run off and leave you.”

  “That’s okay. I just wanted to know if there was anything I could do for you, anything you wanted to work on this afternoon, or …”

  Caitlin snorted. “Hell, let’s just go get a drink.”

  Don’t let Caitlin talk you into cocktails.

  There was a tapas place close by that Caitlin liked.

  “Just for a glass of wine,” she’d said. “And they have small plates, if you’re hungry.”

  It was just after 5 p.m., and though Michelle wasn’t hungry, she figured she’d better have something to sop up her glass of rioja.

  She wasn’t going to have any at all, but Caitlin ordered a bottle, and Michelle had a feeling Caitlin wouldn’t be leaving any of it on the table. And she barely seemed to eat. Just a few olives. One bite of the tortilla. Small as Caitlin was, Michelle wondered how she’d manage even the short drive home.

  Not that Michelle was eating a lot either. Her stomach, her chest, everything felt tight. She’d be getting a call from Gary at some point, and he’d tell her where to pick up her money. Only with Gary, you could never trust that it would be anything simple. He’d find some way to twist it, to fuck with her, just because he could, and because he enjoyed it.

  The restaurant was dark, a lot of stained wood, wrought iron and dark red booths. “It feels a little private, don’t you think?” Caitlin said, taking a tiny nibble of octopus.

  Michelle nodded. Of course, nothing was really private. Gary could have someone spying on her, right now. He could have already hacked her new iPhone for all she knew. If he knew the number, he could ping it, find out what cell tower it was in contact with, approximately where she was. She didn’t know if he could get into the GPS without having physical contact with her phone, without infecting it with spyware, but she’d never assume that he couldn’t.

  That he wouldn’t have some way to turn on the microphone without her knowing.

  “It’s very nice,” she said.

  “I don’t get out enough,” Caitlin said. “I mean, it’s funny to say—I do all this travel, these fundraisers, parties … but I don’t just go out very much. It’s always business.” She chuckled. “I suppose this is, too.”

  What do I say to her? Michelle thought.

  What does she want to hear?

  “I know what you mean,” Michelle said. “You get wrapped up in your business, it gets to be your social circle too. I’ve made some great friends that way. But it’s good to have a life outside of work.”

  Another weary chuckle. “I don’t know if I have a life inside of work.”

  Michelle hesitated. It was tempting to push. To dig. But they barely knew each other. If she started asking too many questions about Safer America …

  “You’ve done some great things,” she said.

  “Here’s hoping,” Caitlin said, raising her wine glass.

  x x x

  The wine bottle hovered over Michelle’s half-empty glass. “No, thank you,” she said to the waiter. Maybe James Bond could belt back a couple of martinis and go do spy stuff, but she wasn’t going to risk it.

  Caitlin, meanwhile, kept drinking, as Michelle had guessed she would.

  “I don’t know,” she was saying. “I’m really not sure about this whole pot thing.”

  “Oh?”

  “Just if it’s worth pouring all kinds of money into opposing something that’s eventually going to pass.” She tilted her glass to her lips. The swallows were getting bigger now, sips turning into mouthfuls. “It’s like trying to hold back the tide.”

  Michelle nodded.

  Caitlin suddenly leaned forward. “I mean, what do you think? You’ve lived in California. Y’all have had medical marijuana for how long now?”

  “Close to twenty years,” Michelle said. Her heart was beating a little faster. This was getting too close, too close to her real life. Or Emily’s real life.

  “And you haven’t fallen into the ocean yet, in spite of what some of my friends here think.” She laughed. “Of course I can’t use California in any kind of an argument with them. They’d look at y’all to prove their point it’s the devil’s weed.”

  Michelle glanced down at her iPhone. 5:52 p.m. She still had plenty of time.

  “I guess there’s plusses and minuses,” she said. “I’m sure there’s some abuse of the medical-marijuana system. It’s easy to get a card if you want one. But pot really seems to help some people.”

  “Well, then, maybe we ought to be treating it more like real medicine. Make it a little harder for any ole’ kid with a hangnail to walk into a clinic and get a Baggie full of weed.”

  With the quality and cost of the stuff you could get in the clinics, your kid with a hangnail probably wouldn’t be coming out with a Baggie-full, Michelle wanted to say. More like a tiny plastic bag with a couple of nice buds.

  Instead she nodded and said, “I’m sure there are ways things could be improved.”

  “Hell, I don’t know.” Caitlin tilted back her glass and swallowed. “Sometimes I think we ought to go in a different direction altogether.”

  “With medical marijuana?”

  “With Safer America. I don’t know, like promote after-school programs. Job training. Maybe community gardens.” She laughed, as if the whole idea was absurd.

  “Why don’t you?”

  “Well, it isn’t up to me. We have a charter. We have the board.”

  “But you’re the founder.”

  “I’m the figurehead.” Caitlin shrugged and tossed back the rest of her wine. “Sometimes you start something, and it takes on a life of its own.”

  “Why don’t I drive you home?”

  “Oh, don’t be silly. It’s just a few blocks.”

  Michelle hesitated. Another situation where she wasn’t sure how hard to push. But she could just see it: her first day on the job, and Caitlin gets pulled over for a DUI, crashes her car into a fire hydrant, or worse.

  “Well, it’s part of my job,” Michelle said lightly. “So you can relax and not have to worry about driving.”

  It wasn’t just that Caitlin had drunk almost the entire bottle of wine. Michelle wondered if she’d had anything else, meds, maybe, whatever it was she took to manage anxiety, to sleep. She had to be taking something, Michelle was willing to bet. She wasn’t weaving, exactly, but it took her an extra effort to plant her foot each time she stepped, and her eyes seemed unfocused.

  “Maybe I should take you up on that.” Caitlin stretched a little. “I’m pretty tired. I can send Rodrigo for the car tomorrow.”

  Leaving the car was fine with the restaurant manager. They knew Caitlin here. “I left them an extra-nice tip,” Caitlin said, sliding into the passenger seat of Michelle’s rented Prius.

  “This your car?” she asked.

  “A rental. But …”

  It’s like the one I have at home, Michelle almost said.

  “I’ve always liked them.”

  “Well, no need for you to be renting a car. There’s an extra one in the garage you can use.”

  “That’s very generous, but—”

  “Now, no arguing.” Caitlin wagged a finger. “It’s supposed to be used for Safer America business, and it’s just sitting there rusting away as it is.”

  They’
d just turned down the broad avenue that led to Caitlin’s house when Michelle’s iPhone rang. Emily’s, rather. The ringtone, “Get Smart.”

  Fucking Gary. And it was only 6:29 p.m.

  “Sorry,” Michelle said. “I have to take this.” She pulled over. No hands-free setup on the rental, and even if she had one, she wasn’t about to put Gary on speakerphone.

  She fumbled around in her new tote for her phone. Her Emily phone.

  “Well, hey there.”

  Just the sound of his voice, that phony flirtatiousness, made her shudder.

  “Hi, listen, I’m going to have to call you back—I’m … driving someone home.”

  A chuckle. “Now, what did I tell you about cocktails with Caitlin?”

  God, Michelle hoped Caitlin hadn’t heard that. She pressed the phone closer to her ear.

  “Five minutes,” she said. “I’m just about there.”

  She disconnected.

  “What was that, Get Smart? How funny!” Caitlin gave Michelle a friendly pat on the arm, giggling a little. “And here I thought you seemed so serious.”

  Michelle supposed that she was serious. It was Emily who’d learned to lighten up a bit, to laugh at Danny’s jokes.

  What was he doing right now? How was he?

  She pushed the thought aside. She couldn’t take the time to worry about him. Not now.

  “You’re early,” she said.

  “Change in plans.”

  Of course.

  “Gonna need you to make a stop first, pick something up. Got a pen?”

  “What am I picking up?”

  “Never mind that. You’re just the delivery gal. You’ll hand it off, and then you’ll get your money.”

  Not good. But so predictable.

  It was close to sunset.

  At first the neighborhood she’d driven through seemed okay. Nice, even. Well-kept older houses, big oak trees, trimmed lawns. Restaurants and clubs that looked funky and hip. Then the main business street turned into peeling beige stucco fast-food chains and auto-part shops: radiators, mufflers, tires. A strip club called Purple Passion that looked like one of the auto-part stores, with faded tin siding. No sidewalks in places, just dirt.

  It hadn’t cooled off much, and Michelle was glad she’d kept the air on, the windows rolled up. She was drenched in sweat as it was, her heart racing like she’d been running. But of course she hadn’t been.